


Of Azkaban

by Othalla



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Moon (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 18:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8171666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Othalla/pseuds/Othalla
Summary: There needs to always be a man on Azkaban.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been on my harddrive for years. So many years.  
> I am officially done.

The story of life.

-

You wake up.

(“Hello, Mr Sam. Do you remember Gerty?”)

You ask where you are.

(“Mr Sam is in the infirmary. Had an accident, Mr Sam did.”)

You don’t remember.

(“Gerty be wanting Mr Sam to stay a few days in here for observation. Run some tests.”)

-

It’s all very normal.

-

Your room is the space behind the kitchen, heated marginally more than the rest of the complex due to the chimney pipe running straight through the wall separating the two rooms. It’s damp – what isn’t – and while you try to keep dry it soaks into everything and fire is only a temporary solution.

Magic doesn’t work right on Azkaban.

No spells can help you.

-

You remember going here – accepting the assignment and arranging the transport – but you don’t actually remember getting here. You don’t remember the boat, not being on it.

You’ve seen it once, in a memory from before this place, but the boat has not greeted your shores yet. It remains hidden on main land, somewhere only the rower knows and goes. The rower is a man like you, only not. He comes and goes with the prisoners.

Sometimes it takes years, you know, the times between the breaking of waves, and the existence that you sold yourself to is a lonely one.

There is Gerty.

There are the prisoners.

Then there’s you.

-

Trinity of the despairing.

Stalked by dementors.

-

It’s easy, here, to get lost.

In the beginning that’s because you run from your nightmares and the hallways are unknown. You take a turn and then another and somehow you still end up where you began, even though there’s no forest to go in a circle in.

You get used to it, though, your fears and the island both. It works like Hogwarts, in a way. Changing under your feet to take you where you’re meant to go, dodging cats and ghosts and angry little halfbloods. Only Azkaban doesn’t believe in dodging, in deviating from the path. Azkaban believes in tradition.

You stop running.

Gets lost in other ways.

-

You kiss the picture above your bed each morning when you wake up and each night when you go to bed, counting days and days and days. Down and down and down.

-

Hopefully not the rabbit hole; you’re just trying to remember.

-

Three years.

It’s only three years.

-

Bread and water.

(“Good morning, inmate thirty-seven, how are we today?)

Porridge.

(Good day, inmate ten, I see you changed spot since yesterday? Good for you!)

Soup.

(Good evening, inmate twenty-three, supper then sleep, yeah?)

-

It’s a lifetime.

-

Inmate seven is the one who talks the most. He’s one of the newer ones – only been here for a year or so now, arrived just before you did. It usually doesn’t take that long for them to go quiet, you remember hearing sometime that you don’t know, but inmate seven probably never heard that. Once every few days, he’ll say please and once every month or so he’ll swear at you. Those days are pretty neat, because aside from the yet to be broken in inmates, you and Gerty the place is awfully dull and quiet.

Some sound can only do good.

-

Not like it could make it worse.

-

You hope.

-

You try not to go outside if you can help it.

Not that the inside is better, but where the air is cold and damp behind walls it is a raging storm outside them and the times you have to go out you doubt you’ll ever be warm again even with all the blankets Gerty wrap around you.

-

You go out to dig graves and bury dead.

No one will ever be free of Azkaban.

Even if someone could it would live forever inside them.

-

Azkaban has never been just a place. It’s a state of being.

It used to be just an island. A rocky, barren piece of useless land that was no good to anyone but the horrors from down under. Then a Lord decided that he was to build his home here and so he did, a fort rising from the ground but never separating to be of itself only, built from the stone that held it.

He should have used another stone. Better yet he should have found another island. Should have been smart and seen the clues that clung to the sharp shores and deafening waves.

He wasn’t, though. Lords seldom are.

He lives still in the walls, you think. A part and not just a memory from the time before no one knew that this had always been a prison meant for those who dwell far below where anyone decent should.

-

You think, maybe, that even if you came here good and up high, it dragged you down.

-

You scream sometimes.

Just scream until your throat is as dry as the rest of you can never ever get.

-

You believe it’s worth it. Have to, there is no other option.

Three years is not forever – even if it feels like it – and when you get out you won’t have to kiss a picture and normal will be as it used to a lifetime ago, before decisions were made and debts were called in. Before you sold yourself.

There are reasons for everything you did, you are a reasonable being, after all, but you do not seem to be able to recall them. They hover, just outside your reach, and you yearn for place to store your memories before you lose what you have left to the fog that clings to you like a lover. Crooning and grooming, shaping you into something you don’t want to know.

-

You can’t see stars from Azkaban.

-

Your dye your clothes with the supplies you find under the sink at the back, hidden beneath old cloth meant for scrubbing – what, you don’t know, everything is dirt – and a brush with more bristles gone than there. A silent cry for battle, for war.

Yellows and oranges and pinks and greens and blues like the sky that you think you remember and everything not dark and sallow and dead.

You don’t want to die yet.

You don’t you don’t you don’t.

-

But on Azkaban there is only death.

And everyone’s dead one way or another.

Even you.

-

Maybe especially you.

-

One year to go. Just one more year to go. You can do this.

-

You have to.

-

(“Is Mr Sam feeling alright?”)

Yeah sure, Gerty. Just a bit of cold. No big deal. It’ll pass soon.

-

There is a prickling feeling in your legs. Pooling at your feet, crawling up your ankles, strangling your knees. Your heart beats and beats, hands shaking just a bit and water spills out over the not-concrete-concrete, darkening it where it soaks in.

There is no running from Azkaban.

Doesn’t matter what your body thinks.

-

(“Would Mr Sam be wanting some soup? Mr Sam should eat more.”)

Nah. Kinda queasy. Will eat something later, Gerty. But thanks for offering.

-

You aren’t feeling all that well.

(“Maybe Mr Sam should lay down?”)

Probably would be a good idea. Good thinking, Gerty.

-

You lay down on the stone, the cold biting at your skin in almost nothing more than as an afterthought. You’re so very tired. It’ll be nice to take a rest and let Gerty do the work for the day. You’ll be better tomorrow.

-

(“Gerty be saying goodnight now, Mr Sam. It has been a pleasure. Sweet dreams.”)

-

The fire comes and goes in a moment.

-

The story of life.

-

You wake up.

(“Hello, Mr Sam. Do you remember Gerty?”)

You ask where you are.

(“Mr Sam is in the infirmary. Had an accident, Mr Sam did.”)

You don’t remember.

(“Gerty be wanting Mr Sam to stay a few days in here for observation. Run some tests.”)

-

It’s all very normal.

-

Rinse.

-

Repeat.

-

No one ever leaves Azkaban.

Especially not you.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit my [tumblr](http://tockae.tumblr.com).


End file.
